President Barack Obama talks about National Security Agency surveillance on Friday in Washington.

Associated Press

For technology companies embarrassed by disclosures of National Security Agency surveillance, President Barack Obama’s speech Friday offered few concessions.

Obama never mentioned two issues about which tech executives have expressed concerns: secret government taps on overseas data centers and the weakening of encryption standards.

The president took a step toward acknowledging one of the industry’s biggest concerns when he pledged to permit technology companies release more information about government requests for data about their users.

“This secrecy will not be indefinite,” Obama said of government requests for details, but not the contents, of email and phone calls. “We will also enable communications providers to make public more information than ever before about the orders that they have received to provide data to the government.”

Still, tech companies were reluctant to criticize the president. In a joint statement, a group of tech companies that includes Google, Microsoft and Facebooksaid, “Crucial details remain to be addressed on these issues, and additional steps are needed on other important issues, so we’ll continue to work with the Administration and Congress to keep the momentum going.”

One of the few executives to speak, Matthew Prince, the chief executive of cybersecurity firm CloudFlare, said he was “pleasantly surprised” by Obama’s speech because of the high-level support for more transparency.